Nokia E50 Revisited
Although I have written about the Nokia E50 before I feel that it wasn’t a “review” of the device. Like so many of my posts it was more a photo exposé than anything else. To make things right I asked Asri from the excellent site i-symbian to write a more in depth review of the Nokia E50. Here’s Asri’s report:
Nokia E50 is the youngest in the Eseries family, targeted to business users. It was announced in May 2006. With a very sleek design in a compact form-factor, E50 delivers superb performance.
Hardware
The very first thing came into my mind after holding it in my hands was, WOW! That is one hell of a cute little smartphone! Feature-wise, E50 has the least bells and whistles compared to other Eseries. For example, it does not have WLAN (WiFi) or integrated QWERTY like E61 or E70 and the only E-series device (at the moment) without 3G. From my understanding, it is released in 2 variants. One with camera (Asian market) and another one without. I tested the one with the camera. It’s only 1.3 megapixel, so, there’s nothing to shout about.
The screen is a portrait 240 x 320 QVGA and supports up to 262k colours. The screen’s physical size is smaller than say the E60’s which made the pix-els sharper.
One of my complaints with the hardware is the Menu/Application button and the Cancel (C) button which are small, and cramped between the softkeys and the Red & Green buttons. If you have big fingers, you need some time to get used to this placement. The Edit/Pen key is nowhere to be found on the front, it’s located at the right-side. I think it has something to do with the fact that many S60 users, especially normal users aren’t using it and didn’t even bother to learn it’s functions.
Thank God the 5-ways joystick is really a joy to use. It’s smooth and responsive. Better than the E61’s. And the alpha numeric keypads are sized comfortably, easy to move from one to another. Typing SMS and dialling numbers is a breeze.
The memory card is not miniSD like other Eseries devices but microSD. If I remember correctly, this is the 5th time Nokia uses different external memory card standard after MMC, RS-MMC, DV RS-MMC and miniSD. The hot-swappable card slot is located at the left-side, near the bottom. In order to access the card slot, you need to remove the battery cover (but not the battery) which is cool. All in all, hardware-wise, E50 is sleek, and will appeal to business users who are using Nokia’s 6000 series (6210, 6310, 6230 etc).
Software
Software wise, E50 contains major features of E-series, and some features have been cut down. For example, it’s using QuickOffice viewer instead of S60 v3 Office, which means no editing can be done. That is a little downer for me. Users who want to edit documents can install MobiSystem’s OfficeSuite but in my opinion, document editors should come pre-installed for a business targeted device like this.
Although it doesn’t have WiFi, the S60 Bowser is included. However, personally, I am not really fond of browsing on small portrait screen. (Nothing can be compared to mobile browsing experience using E61’s landscape screen!). Furthermore, without WiFi, the browsing experience is limited to the data plan that you subscribe. Unless you are riding on use-all-you-can-unlimited-data plan, be careful, or it will burn your pocket 
But, hey! You can surf anytime, anywhere, at your own convenience and don’t need to buy 3rd party app for that 
I dont know what 3rd party applications will be included in the final release. The one that I tested doesn’t have any. This should not be a big problem because there are plenty of 3rd party S60 v3 applications available. Other standard S60 v3 applications are included like Messaging, PIM, Music Player, Video Player, Image Viewer etc.
Verdict
In short, E50 contains many ingredients to be used as a business device. Traditionally, Nokia’s 6000 series was the preferred mobile phone for business users and Nokia reinvented this business tool with Eseries. Of all Eseries introduced to date, E50 is the less bulky and less sophisticated but it is the slimmest and (for lack of better words), sexiest. Believe it or not, there’s no words to explain it. You must experience it yourself to believe it.
Thanks for the review Asri!
If you are like me - cannot get enough of the E50, there is a great blog dedicated to the Nokia E50.
November 7th, 2006 at 10:53 am
I am a e61 user and i love my phone, but E50 is really a SEXY phone to hold.
my friend bought it yesterday and got for half the price of E61.
November 7th, 2006 at 11:36 am
Ed,
Thanks very much for publishing my short E50 review. I have also published this news in our frontpage http://www.i-symbian.com
Long live E-Series.Org!!!
Cheers!!!
November 7th, 2006 at 11:38 am
Hi Asri,
Thanks for writing it in the first place! Keep up the good work.
Ed
November 7th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Ed, thanks for your kind words! I try to make the blog useful for the E50 users. Hope to redesign it soon to make it a bit more attractive.
You do a great job here, keep it up!
November 7th, 2006 at 2:42 pm
Hola.. i have the e61.. but feel its a litlle slow sometimes.. any hints on this new nokia phone.. is it faster than the e61 ?? thanks for a great blog. brgds http://www.turbino.dk/index-uk.html
November 8th, 2006 at 12:23 am
Excellent review! I plan to get one as a weekend phone, using E61 right now:)
Thank you all for the information!
November 9th, 2006 at 5:18 am
Hi Asri,
Nice review, but you forgot the plus point of the phone that are above and beyong the current E-Series such as the Message Reader, Avaya Connect and so on.
In my opinion it is the latest and greatest E-Series minus WiFi, QWERTY and 3G which is useless here in North America anyway,
Micro SD was a smart move.
November 9th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
Dear Elisha,
Thanks for your comment. Regarding the new functions (like Team, Search Application, Text to Speech etc), I had no time to explore them all because I only used the loaned unit for a very short time. I only touched the surface
One of the best function of E50 (IMHO) is the new Search utility which is smething like a global find utility found on Palm PDAs. It’s very easy to use and does exactly what it should.
Please, if you find the review useful and want to discuss about it, do email me at ASRI AT I-SYMBIAN DOT COM
Cheers!
November 16th, 2006 at 8:38 pm
looks like there’s gonna be a full black E50 out soon:
http://darlamack.blogs.com/darlamack/2006/11/nokias_metal_bl.html
December 2nd, 2006 at 5:30 am
Hi,
Does E50 work with mini sd wifi card? Is there any compatible mini sd with Nokia E50?
December 5th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
Has anybody tried to put a micro sd wifi card to his nokia e50? Does the wlan works? Can you use it for voip calls?
December 11th, 2006 at 11:52 pm
is there a microsd wifi card available?
it should work if it has drivers for Symbian 9.1 v3
if not it won’t.
December 18th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
E50 carachtares are very small , fonts are small please find out any soluotion
December 20th, 2006 at 2:38 pm
I have a less then 2 month old E50 that was working perfectly unitl about 3 hours ago. All of a sudden, it froze and wou;dn’t do anything. I took out the battery and SIM card. When I try to restart it, I get the Nokia screen for a long time then just white. Has anyone had this problem and/or know of how to fix it?!?!? PLEASE HELP!
January 1st, 2007 at 12:20 am
Frusterated in NYC ….Hi I have exactly the same problem as you had. Mu phone also get hanged and it does not get started. Then I took it to the Nokia care Centre where the software was reinstalled. I want to know from someone else why this problem occured. Is there any answer for this. I was downloading something when it happened. I was also using F-secure anti virus software. HELP!!!
January 31st, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Hi! Also looking for someone who tried a mini SD wifi card with E 50? Is it possible? Besides, does a mini SD wificard exist with 1 Go memory? Maybe I ask too much
February 27th, 2007 at 4:08 am
E50 uses a ‘micro’ SD card and NOT ‘mini’. Is there a wi-fi micro SD card available ?! it would be awesome to get this baby on wi-fi !
March 7th, 2007 at 2:01 am
Hi,
Have u tried any web browser on your phone with Landscape mode. please inform if your E50 works in Landscape mode ?
March 13th, 2007 at 8:23 am
At first I wasn’t interested in buying a phone with WiFi support, but now that I’ve decided to buy a BT keyboard for my E50 I began to look for a way to access WiFi with the phone. There are MicroSD WLAN cards out there (soon), but does the E50 support SDIO? A Google search won’t turn up anything straightforward, but some Symbian press releases announce symbian being SDIO compatible.
If it does support SDIO, then the only problem left would be finding the drivers. And these can be self made, can’t they?
I ain’t a programmer or anything, I’m just wondering.
March 14th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
There’s an update for isync but apparently it doesn’t support Nokia e50.. does anybody know if it actually works with it?
April 3rd, 2007 at 9:44 am
E50 and other smart phones are ostensibly good, but they are not crafted very vell. I have a N73 which creaks like a sagem and crashes. my business phone, this ‘wonderful’ E50 is reliable for calls, signal (especially) and data/calendar, but so what - I had a standard phone for ages that did all that. You can’t edit word and excel docs on these smartphones, and my biggest complaint bout the E50 is that you get tennis elbow after every texting session. the keys are so stiff!
May 1st, 2007 at 4:30 am
SpecTec’s MicroSD Card with Wifi - http://www.chipchick.com/2006/09/spectecs_micros.html
June 2nd, 2007 at 5:33 am
I am using Nokia E50. Could anyone please let me know how to change the display from portrait to landscape mode. I feel landscope mode would be useful for web browing.
July 30th, 2007 at 2:04 am
From Spectec website itself, micro WLAN seems not compatible with any Nokia symbian.
http://www.spectec.com.tw/sdw823.htm
August 27th, 2007 at 9:46 am
Hey! Any idea where I can get the orange theme shown in the screenshots?
August 27th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
Hi Slimso,
I think it is Hot Sun
http://www.e-series.org/nokia-e61-themes
August 28th, 2007 at 4:04 am
I love this phone. Have had it for a while but I have started to have problems. The phone is getting slower and slower…sometime it take 45 seconds to send a simply text message! I’ve tried to clear all images etc… but it hasn’t helped..any ideas? Thanks
August 29th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Thanks “admin”, I appreciate the prompt response.
I didn’t know E61 themes work on E50 too (different screen size).
Well, here’s my “review” on the E50 series:
E50 is the first Nokia that ever appealed to me. I guess the “slim” look and feel made it an instant attraction.
Although looks and design first caught my eye, I was more that pleased to see it had Symbian OS, lots of connectivity features, various applications, a decent camera, 70MB of memory + microSD, and all at a quite affordable price. The only shame is it doesn’t have radio, but I can live without that.
I’ve had no major problems with it (a few deadlocks because of the RealPlayer and some e-mail-inbox-updating bugs) and they were all solved along with the recent software update.
The tiny usability issues that still burst my bubble every once in a while are:
1. Why not automatically close the Contacts application once I selected a contact to call? Instead it hides uselessly in the background till I use it again. (same goes for the Log application)
2. Why don’t the two volume buttons on the side act as scroll buttons when they can?
3. Why can’t I turn on bluetooth in a single touch of the keypad? It would be very useful while driving.
4. Why isn’t there a “Page up / down” shortcut key when reading long messages or emails?
5. Why do I have to use a different application to get visible (larger) clock digits on the powersaver?
Hope I didn’t damage the E50 image, to those interested this phone is well worth the money and I’m sure these software quirks will be noticed and resolved.
August 30th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
“Fd”, there is an application called “SMS Accelerator” available on the Nokia website to fix your problem. http://europe.nokia.com/A4162180
I’ve had E50 now for 3 weeks and also have some problems. The phone has rebooted 3 times without any reason, 2 times it happened during an ongoing call. I have the latest software version (V07.13.0.0 dated 26th April 2007) and couldn’t find anything related to this from Nokia Support Discussions Board.
If it does this few more times I will certainly require a new one, maybe my phone has been manufactured on monday morning
August 31st, 2007 at 11:59 pm
iam a user of nokia user .nokia e50 is a cool and a sexy phone last week my phones switching of nob came off. i bought the phone about 3 month ago.now nokia’s service center told i got to buy a new pannel.since it is a new phone there is no garrentee for it….pls consider my request………………………………………….
September 6th, 2007 at 7:26 am
I have an E50 search running fine, have been onto Nokia web site would appear Mobile search is not available for E50 but is for all the other E series phones. Can you shed any light on this. Many thanks
September 24th, 2007 at 10:28 am
Do any one know the use of “edit or pencil” button which is at right side of the phone. Anyone know how to change the function shortcut button which above the “edit” button.
October 9th, 2007 at 6:17 am
Hi
I have an E50. Can anyone tell me how to increase the font size when viewing the contacts info? I really find it difficult to read the phone numbers. It will be of great help.
October 26th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
i want the ansring machine software for my e5oi kinly help me out from where i will get it
January 2nd, 2008 at 7:01 am
hi Senthil,
you wanna know the use of EDIT or PENCIL button on the side. When we are in notepad or somewhere where CURSOR is visible, press and hold the PENCIL and move the JOYSTICK to select text. After selection, you’ll see COPY on the left selection key, press the COPY button while keeping the PENCIL button pressed. The selected text gets copied to memory. Now you can PASTE it in any other application, by pressing and holding PENCIL button along with the Right selection key displaying PASTE.
That’s it.
June 27th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
I have been using Nokia E50 for 4 months. I found it excellent. Simple looking very nice phone. I love to browse wap and web through this phone but switch off/on button is very weak.